Sunday, February 14, 2010

Valentine's Day Heart Soap

Happy Valentine's Day!
Ah, the pinkest of holidays...I had some time for a project today while my boyfriend was making me a pink cake so we were working side-by-side, awww...
I read about Martha Stewart's Heart-Shaped Soap in her Encyclopedia of Crafts and had to try it.  That's where I found out about this amazing resource: Majestic Mountain Sage in Logan, Utah.  How impressive is this?: they have everything you need to make soaps, creams, perfumes, lip balm, lotions and more including essential oils, molds, recipes, ingredient calculators, books, bottles, labels....and a blog too.  Wow!  I ordered 5 pounds of clear and 5 pounds of white glycerin melt-and-pour soap (which was carried home Friday night with the rest of the haul I needed for the weekend).
I'd say the hardest part was getting the glycerin out of the buckets: there must be some way to get the perfecly shaped, little cubes that Martha has in her tutorial.  Other than that it was pretty simple: coat a tray with vaseline to hinder sticking, melt the glycerin slowly in the microwave, stir in some food coloring and scent (I used grapefruit essential oil) and pour into the tray. 
Martha also recommends spritzing with alcohol to eliminate air bubbles.  That worked pretty well, but I somehow got a bit of clouding to the clear soap that wasn't planned for, so I think I'll ask the folks at Majestic Moutain Sage if there was something else I should have been doing to monitor the melting process.
It didn't take too long to set, maybe a couple of hours and it was ready to be cut.  Thankfully after the first one or two shapes were carved out, the rest were extracted very easily.
I stamped some messages into each heart: a little hard to see in the pic, but it was fun to do.  That's also some Heart-Covered Wax Paper from Martha (just stamp out some construction paper hearts, layer between sheets of wax paper, cover with paper towels and dry iron to fuse the layers together, simple!)
And just like with sugar cookies, you can reuse the scraps you have left over after you cut out all the hearts you want.  I'm going to have to make more soap soon, but now it's time for Valentine's Day Dinner, have a good one :-)
And P.S. Happy Chinese New Year too...

8 comments:

Truly Smitten said...

Hi Jen!

what a truly crafty blog you have! will definitely be browsing through it tonight =) Thanks for stopping by too !

Craftiness NOW said...

thanks, truly smitten! i'm definitely a fan of your blog :-)

erica said...

I have never made soap before but it looks like a lot of fun. The hearts are adorable. They would go awesome in my heart guest bathroom!

Craftiness NOW said...

thanks again, Fashion Meets Food, it's a fun, fairly easy project, u should try it! i'm going to do a solid color next. you should post pics of the hearts in your guest bathroom!

KristenB said...

I love the soaps! You and your man are too cute. I wish my husband would make me a pink cake. =)

Craftiness NOW said...

awww, thanks again, KristenB. i wish every day could be just me and the boyfriend working at home together, and he cooks too!

Phyllis said...

Hi Jen, I came over from Justcook NYC to check out the close up of these adorable pink heart soaps. I see what Justin was talking about now with the words on them. Super cool!

Craftiness NOW said...

hi phyllis, thanks so much for stopping by! your blog looks so tasty :-)

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...